The Government Has Fucked The Alcohol Guidelines

The Government has re-evaluated the concept of drinking alcohol and have decided that they’ve been confused for the past 27 years and men should be drinking a lot less than was previously advised.

Whilst it was well known that men were allowed to drink more than women BECAUSE WE MADE THIS BLOODY COUNTRY WITH MALE HANDS SO WHY AREN’T WE ALLOWED TO DRINK MORE ALCOHOL, GODDAMMIT, the guidelines have changed in a move that will surely get everyone tweeting Hashtag Not All Men.

Yep, the Government have said that men should now only be drinking 14 units per week as opposed to the 21 units that were originally thought to have been safe for nearly three decades. The same as our feminine counterparts, y’know because obviously our male bodies used to be better at handling alco…come on, seriously. Why was this even a thing? Put aside the fact that they’ve gone “Men should drink less” why was it even a thing that men were allowed to drink more than women? It makes no sense. Next thing you’ll be telling me that it used to be illegal to be gay or ginger.

OH and apparently we’re being told that saving up the units and cashing them all in at the end of the week is not a very good thing to do. WHO KNEW? That’s completely rocked us because we save our monthly units up in order to record our podcasts, the fuck we gonna do now? (First podcast uploaded soon, BTW).

The amount of alcohol that we’re allowed to weekly drink translates into this:

Six Pints of 4% Beer.

OR

Six Glasses of 13% Wine.

OR

FOURTEEN 40% shots.

I get really confused by the calculation of units. One shot of 40% whiskey is the equivalent of around 1/3 or 1/2 of a pint of beer (depending on which Government diagram you look at). Meaning that a person who has drank one pint of beer is considered to have consumed the same amount of units as a person who has just chinned three (or two?) shots of whiskey. If we go further into perspective, a person who has literally drank HALF a bottle of whiskey is considered to have drunk the same amount of units as a man who slowly drinks six (or seven???) pints of mild strength beer.

I’m so confused by the calculations that go into it. I don’t know what i’m allowed to drink anymore. This is hitting me hard as I drank a lot to commiserate the memory of bacon, because we’re not allowed to drink bacon anymore. Why are the Government doing this? Can we still eat diet coke?

As well as debunking the myth that men can handle their booze more than women, it’s also been revealed that drinking a glass of red wine a day ISN’T good for you. Apparently it only displays health benefits for women over the age of 55. That’s disappointing.

The other thing the government has said is that the recommended amount of units has been set because that is the amount where chance of injury or cancer increases by 1%. That is one whole percent. I’m not even making that up, have a look at point 14 on this Government PDF.

There are a ton of articles on the internet that completely slate the new guidelines. Nearly all of them are confused by the 1% statistic, but most of them debunk the fact that no amount of alcohol is safe to consume, stating that excessive research has proven time and time again that someone who safely moderates the amount they drink can live for just as long, if not longer, than someone who abstains completely from the sauce. It’s Dry January all over again.

So What Does This Mean For You?

Essentially, if you drink like a horse, you’re going to pay no attention to these guidelines and your life will still be the same alcohol fuelled ride it always was. If you try to moderate your drinking habits to stay safe within the ‘rules’ and you’re male: you’re fucked.

Not literally, but you get my point. You’ve essentially been poisoning yourself on the advice of the Government and they’re not even saying sorry. Women are ok, because the government have finally concluded that you can drink the same amount as men. I think you’re even allowed to vote now as well? 21st Century living, ey?

It also means that bartenders will have to taste test less drinks each week. This incredible article on Imbibe explains all of that.

It’s also yet another attack by the Government on the hospitality industry. Telling people they need to drink a lot less than they used to obviously invokes a loss in sales for hospitality. If only one person adheres to these new bullshit – SORRY GOVERNMENT APPROVED – guidelines, and decides to drink three less pints a week than they usually would, assuming the pints are a ridiculously cheap £3 a pint, there’d be £468 lost a year just from one punter. If 100 people who normally drink nine pints over a week, adhere, that’ll cost the industry £46,800 a year.

That number doesn’t seem like a lot, but, considering there are over 64million people in Great Britain, and if we simply and juvenilely assume that 100,000 out of that 64million adhere to the guidelines, which is entirely possible and is only around 1.6% of the entire GB population and only around 12% of the population of London, thenthe industry loses £46.8million a year, and that’s assuming all pints are £3.

That. Is. Fucking. Ridiculous.

I’m being purely hyperbolic of course, but with the average yearly wage of a bartender in the UK being around £16,000… that’s 2925 bartenders out of a job EACH YEAR through lost profits (no association). Fuck those guys though, right? Who needs food?

Alcohol is of course responsible for an abhorrent amount of admissions to hospital (and admissions to ex’s) and is a massive drain on resources for the police, the NHS and for everyone else that has to look after drunken dickheads, so actively encouraging people to moderate their drinking is nothing but a good thing for the services affected by it so much, We Promote Responsible Drinking, and of course with the state that the NHS is in right now every little will help, but with the guidelines changing yet again what are we meant to believe? Supposed medical guidelines have been saying that we’ve been needing to drink less for years apparently, but the Government have only just got up to speed. Do we wait around until the Government decides they were wrong again or until different medical people have a whiskey and change their minds?

Also, I’m pretty sure old Prime Minister David Cameron had more than three units of alcohol when he apparently did that thing to a pig.

Given how stubborn the Government normally is, I can’t see these guidelines being changed anytime soon. I’m just dreading the day in 27 years time when they say that alcohol is completely off limits and everyone should just drink tonic water instead.